The Peninsular Hotel, Hong Kong

I really wanted to have tea at The Peninsular as it was recommended to me by a friend, so we set our watches, and rocked up in tea dresses at the earliest possible moment (non-guests can’t book) and... well you can see the queue.  I had a brainwave of heading over to the Langham instead, but they didn’t do afternoon tea :(

It was a Saturday admittedly, but when we popped back towards the end of the afternoon on Sunday it was practically empty - but we were in flip flops and they wouldn’t serve us!  Although having said that, when I was at The Peninsular in Shanghai, I had a spare pair of shoes in my bag, and when I asked if I should put them on, they just looked at me and shook their heads at the crazy English girl - but then I did end up getting into trouble there as well!!

If you are visited China then you could always try and have tea at The Peninsular in Shanghai or Beijing - or well, do it in London?!

Don’t get me wrong, some of these are excellent, but I couldn’t, in good conscience give them a Pearl Recommendation.  Sometimes they were just beaten to the punch, or I couldn’t decide a clear winner, other times they had a lot right, but I felt they just weren’t there.  I don’t really want to give bad reviews, but anything I felt was really best avoided you’ll find in the Jellyfish section.